I'm having a hard time swallowing that (for a number of reasons).
Palin wasn’t on the ticket this time around.
I was more enthusiastic for McCain than Romney. I neither donated nor campaigned for Romney. I did both for McCain. McCain was very strong on military issues and had a consistent record on pro-life and pro-marriage issues. Romney had no foreign policy record and formed no coherent foreign policy message. His dubious record on abortion and marriage are well-known and his campaign explicitly made it clear that they would do nothing to change the status quo on abortion. Most of the issues McCain gets picked on for from the right are beltway insider issues that the general public doesn’t care about, like campaign finance reform.
Wikipedia says in 2008 the final tally of votes counted was 131.3 million, compared to 122.3 million in 2004.
Politico reported back on Wednesday, 11/5/2008 that the turnout was 130 million. So these current turnout numbers of 117 million are not likely to go up much judging by that early 2008 report being almost on the money.
This is still more than 2000, when about 100 million voted.
And that makes no sense at all. That is something that really needs to be investigated and analyzed. The numbers I have at present are:
McCain 59,597,520
Romney 57,803,614
That great Republican enthusiasm expected for this election sure didn't pan out based on the information available so far.
Check the percentages due to the population increase. These numbers don’t tell the entire story.